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And the juggernaut rolls on…

 

Most major news wires have already called the Nevada GOP Caucus for Donald Trump (despite only 3% reporting) making it 3 in a row:

• Trump 42%
• Cruz 22.8%
• Rubio 21.8%

Marking Rubio's 4th loss to Trump in a row.

Preliminary entrance polls taken of Republican caucus-goers show that nearly 6 in 10 are angry at the way the government is working, and about half of them supported the billionaire businessman.

Trump was also supported by about 6 in 10 of those who said they care most about immigration, and nearly half of those who said they care most about the economy.

Nevada caucuses winner Donald Trump was supported by 7 in 10 of those who preferred an outsider, according to early results of the entrance poll conducted for the Associated Press and television networks.

And now the speech:

The establishment is gonna need some more huff and puff…

 

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/21pFtUf Tyler Durden

 

By EconMatters

After short covering Monday, Tuesday pushed the oil market down with no help from OPEC and a Risk Off mode in financial markets. With a bad API report after hours look for weakness ahead of the Department of Energy Report on Wednesday morning.

 

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1LaK7Bw EconMatters

Submitted by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

“I was astonished, bewildered. This was America, a country where, whatever its faults, people could speak, write, assemble, demonstrate without fear. It was in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights. We were a democracy… But I knew it wasn't a dream; there was a painful lump on the side of my head… The state and its police were not neutral referees in a society of contending interests. They were on the side of the rich and powerful. Free speech? Try it and the police will be there with their horses, their clubs, their guns, to stop you. From that moment on, I was no longer a liberal, a believer in the self-correcting character of American democracy. I was a radical, believing that something fundamental was wrong in this country—not just the existence of poverty amidst great wealth, not just the horrible treatment of black people, but something rotten at the root. The situation required not just a new president or new laws, but an uprooting of the old order, the introduction of a new kind of society—cooperative, peaceful, egalitarian.” ? Historian Howard Zinn

America is at a crossroads.

History may show that from this point forward, we will have left behind any semblance of constitutional government and entered into a militaristic state where all citizens are suspects and security trumps freedom.

Certainly, this is a time when government officials operate off their own inscrutable, self-serving playbook with little in the way of checks and balances, while American citizens are subjected to all manner of indignities and violations with little hope of defending themselves.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, we have moved beyond the era of representative government and entered a new age—the age of authoritarianism. Even with its constantly shifting terrain, this topsy-turvy travesty of law and government has become America’s new normal.

Don’t believe me?

Let me take you on a brief guided tour, but prepare yourself. The landscape is particularly disheartening to anyone who remembers what America used to be.

The Executive Branch: Whether it’s the Obama administration’s war on whistleblowers, the systematic surveillance of journalists and regular citizens, the continued operation of Guantanamo Bay, or the occupation of Afghanistan, Barack Obama has surpassed his predecessors in terms of his abuse of the Constitution and the rule of law. President Obama, like many of his predecessors, has routinely disregarded the Constitution when it has suited his purposes, operating largely above the law and behind a veil of secrecy, executive orders and specious legal justifications. Rest assured that no matter who wins this next presidential election, very little will change. The policies of the American police state will continue.

 

The Legislative Branch:  It is not overstating matters to say that Congress may well be the most self-serving, semi-corrupt institution in America. Abuses of office run the gamut from elected representatives neglecting their constituencies to engaging in self-serving practices, including the misuse of eminent domain, earmarking hundreds of millions of dollars in federal contracting in return for personal gain and campaign contributions, having inappropriate ties to lobbyist groups and incorrectly or incompletely disclosing financial information. Pork barrel spending, hastily passed legislation, partisan bickering, a skewed work ethic, graft and moral turpitude have all contributed to the public’s increasing dissatisfaction with congressional leadership. No wonder 86 percent of Americans disapprove of the job Congress is doing.

 

The Judicial Branch: The Supreme Court was intended to be an institution established to intervene and protect the people against the government and its agents when they overstep their bounds. Yet through their deference to police power, preference for security over freedom, and evisceration of our most basic rights for the sake of order and expediency, the justices of the United States Supreme Court have become the guardians of the American police state in which we now live. As a result, sound judgment and justice have largely taken a back seat to legalism, statism and elitism, while preserving the rights of the people has been deprioritized and made to play second fiddle to both governmental and corporate interests.

 

Shadow Government: America’s next president will inherit more than a bitterly divided nation teetering on the brink of financial catastrophe when he or she assumes office. He or she will also inherit a shadow government, one that is fully operational and staffed by unelected officials who are, in essence, running the country. Referred to as the Deep State, this shadow government is comprised of unelected government bureaucrats, corporations, contractors, paper-pushers, and button-pushers who are actually calling the shots behind the scenes right now.

 

Law Enforcement: By and large the term “law enforcement” encompasses all agents within a militarized police state, including the military, local police, and the various agencies such as the Secret Service, FBI, CIA, NSA, etc. Having been given the green light to probe, poke, pinch, taser, search, seize, strip and generally manhandle anyone they see fit in almost any circumstance, all with the general blessing of the courts, America’s law enforcement officials, no longer mere servants of the people entrusted with keeping the peace but now extensions of the military, are part of an elite ruling class dependent on keeping the masses corralled, under control, and treated like suspects and enemies rather than citizens. In the latest move to insulate police from charges of misconduct, Virginia lawmakers are considering legislation to keep police officers’ names secret, ostensibly creating secret police forces.

 

A Suspect Surveillance Society: Every dystopian sci-fi film we’ve ever seen is suddenly converging into this present moment in a dangerous trifecta between science, technology and a government that wants to be all-seeing, all-knowing and all-powerful. By tapping into your phone lines and cell phone communications, the government knows what you say. By uploading all of your emails, opening your mail, and reading your Facebook posts and text messages, the government knows what you write. By monitoring your movements with the use of license plate readers, surveillance cameras and other tracking devices, the government knows where you go. By churning through all of the detritus of your life—what you read, where you go, what you say—the government can predict what you will do. By mapping the synapses in your brain, scientists—and in turn, the government—will soon know what you remember. And by accessing your DNA, the government will soon know everything else about you that they don’t already know: your family chart, your ancestry, what you look like, your health history, your inclination to follow orders or chart your own course, etc. Consequently, in the face of DNA evidence that places us at the scene of a crime, behavior sensing technology that interprets our body temperature and facial tics as suspicious, and government surveillance devices that cross-check our biometrics, license plates and DNA against a growing database of unsolved crimes and potential criminals, we are no longer “innocent until proven guilty.”

 

Military Empire: America’s endless global wars and burgeoning military empire—funded by taxpayer dollars—have depleted our resources, over-extended our military and increased our similarities to the Roman Empire and its eventual demise. The U.S. now operates approximately 800 military bases in foreign countries around the globe at an annual cost of at least $156 billion. The consequences of financing a global military presence are dire. In fact, David Walker, former comptroller general of the U.S., believes there are “striking similarities” between America’s current situation and the factors that contributed to the fall of Rome, including “declining moral values and political civility at home, an over-confident and over-extended military in foreign lands and fiscal irresponsibility by the central government.”

I haven’t even touched on the corporate state, the military industrial complex, SWAT team raids, invasive surveillance technology, zero tolerance policies in the schools, overcriminalization, or privatized prisons, to name just a few, but what I have touched on should be enough to show that the landscape of our freedoms has already changed dramatically from what it once was and will no doubt continue to deteriorate unless Americans can find a way to wrest back control of their government and reclaim their freedoms.

That brings me to the final and most important factor in bringing about America’s shift into authoritarianism: “we the people.” We are the government. Thus, if the government has become a tyrannical agency, it is because we have allowed it to happen, either through our inaction or our blind trust.

Essentially, there are four camps of thought among the citizenry when it comes to holding the government accountable. Which camp you fall into says a lot about your view of government—or, at least, your view of whichever administration happens to be in power at the time.

In the first camp are those who trust the government to do the right thing, despite the government’s repeated failures in this department.

 

In the second camp are those who not only don’t trust the government but think the government is out to get them.

 

In the third camp are those who see government neither as an angel nor a devil, but merely as an entity that needs to be controlled, or as Thomas Jefferson phrased it, bound “down from mischief with the chains of the Constitution.”

 

Then there’s the fourth camp, comprised of individuals who pay little to no attention to the workings of government, so much so that they barely vote, let alone know who’s in office. Easily entertained, easily distracted, easily led, these are the ones who make the government’s job far easier than it should be.

It is easy to be diverted, distracted and amused by the antics of the presidential candidates, the pomp and circumstance of awards shows, athletic events, and entertainment news, and the feel-good evangelism that passes for religion today. What is far more difficult to face up to is the reality of life in America, where unemployment, poverty, inequality, injustice and violence by government agents are increasingly norms.

The powers-that-be want us to remain divided, alienated from each other based on our politics, our bank accounts, our religion, our race and our value systems. Yet as George Orwell observed, “The real division is not between conservatives and revolutionaries but between authoritarians and libertarians.”

The only distinction that matters anymore is where you stand in the American police state. In other words, you’re either part of the problem or part of the solution.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/21euh03 Tyler Durden

Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,

In my archives there is a column or two that introduces the reader to John Perkins’ important book, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.

An EHM is an operative who sells the leadership of a developing country on an economic plan or massive development project. The Hit Man convinces a country’s government that borrowing large sums of money from US financial institutions in order to finance the project will raise the country’s living standards. The borrower is assured that the project will increase Gross Domestic Product and tax revenues and that these increases will allow the loan to be repaid.

 

However, the plan is designed to over-estimate the benefits so that the indebted country cannot pay the principal and interest. As Perkins’ puts it, the plans are based on “distorted financial analyses, inflated projections, and rigged accounting,” and if the deception doesn’t work, “threats and bribes” are used to close the deal.

 

The next step in the deception is the appearance of the International Monetary Fund. The IMF tells the indebted country that the IMF will save its credit rating by lending the money with which to repay the country’s creditors. The IMF loan is not a form of aid. It merely replaces the country’s indebtedness to banks with indebtedness to the IMF.

 

To repay the IMF, the country has to accept an austerity plan and agree to sell national assets to private investors. Austerity means cuts in social pensions, social services, employment and wages, and the budget savings are used to repay the IMF. Privatization means selling oil, mineral and public infrastructure in order to repay the IMF. The deal usually imposes an agreement to vote with the US in the UN and to accept US military bases.

 

Occasionally a country’s leader refuses the plan or the austerity and privatization. If bribes don’t work, the US sends in the jackals—assassins who remove the obstacle to the looting process.

Perkins’ book caused a sensation. It showed that the United States’ attitude of helpfulness toward poorer countries was only a pretext for schemes to loot the countries. Perkins’ book sold more than a million copies and stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for 73 weeks.

Now the book has been reissued with the addition of 14 new chapters and a 30-page listing of Hit Man activity during the years 2004-2015. 

Perkins shows that despite his revelations, the situation is worse than ever and has spread into the West itself. The populations of Ireland, Greece, Portugal, Spain, Italy, and the United States itself are now being looted by Hit Man activity.

Perkins’ book shows that the US is “exceptional” only in the unbridled violence it applies to others who get in its way. One of the new chapters tells the story of France-Albert Rene, president of Seychelles, who threatened to reveal the illegal and inhumane eviction of the residents of Diego Garcia by Britain and Washington so that the island could be converted into an air base from which Washington could bomb noncompliant countries in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa. Washington sent in a team of jackels to murder the president of Seychelles, but the assassins were foiled. All but one were captured, tried and sentenced to execution or prison, but a multi-million dollar bribe to Rene freed them. Rene got the message and became compliant.

In the original printing of his book, Perkins tells the stories of how jackals arranged airplane crashes to get rid of Panama’s non-compliant president, Omar Torrijos, and Ecuador’s non-compliant president, Jaime Roldos. When Rafael Correa became president of Ecuador, he refused to pay some of the illegitimate debts that had been piled on Ecuador, closed the United States’ largest military base in Latin America, forced the renegotiation of exploitative oil contracts, ordered the central bank to use funds deposited in US banks for domestic projects, and consistently opposed Washington’s hegemonic control over Latin America.

Correa had marked himself for overthrow or assassination. However, Washington had just overthrown in a military coup the democratically elected Honduran president, Manuel Zelaya, whose policies favored the people of Honduras over those of foreign interests. Concerned that two military coups in succession against reformist presidents would be noticed, to get rid of Correa the CIA turned to the Ecuadoran police. Led by a graduate of Washington’s School of the Americas, the police moved to overthrow Correa but were overpowered by the Ecuadoran military. However, Correa got the message. He reversed his policies toward American oil companies and announced that he would auction off huge blocks of Eucador’s rain forests to the oil companies. He closed down, Fundacion Pachamama, an organization with which a reformed Perkins was associated that worked to preserve Ecuador’s rain forests and indigenous populations.

Western banks backed up by the World Bank are even worse looters than the oil and timber companies. Perkins writes:

“Over the past three decades, sixty of the world’s poorest countries have paid $550 billion in principal and interest on loans of $540 billion, yet they still owe a whopping $523 billion on those same loans. The cost of servicing that debt is more than these countries spend on health or education and is twenty times the amount they receive annually in foreign aid. In addition, World Bank projects have brought untold suffering to some of the planet’s poorest people. In the past ten years alone, such projects have forced an estimated 3.4 million people out of their homes; the governments in these countries have beaten, tortured, and killed opponents of World Bank projects.”

Perkins describes how Boeing plundered Washington state taxpayers. Using lobbyists, bribes, and blackmail threats to move production facilities to another state, Boeing succeeded in having the Washington state legislature give the corporation a tax break that diverted $8.7 billion into Boeings’ coffers from health care, education and other social services. The massive subsidies legislated for the benefit of corporations are another form of rent extraction and Hit Man activity.

Perkins has a guilty conscience and still suffers from his role as a Hit Man for the evil empire, which has now turned to the plunder of American citizens. He has done everything he can to make amends, but he reports that the system of exploitation has multiplied many times and is now so commonplace that it no longer has to be hidden. Perkins writes:

“A major change is that this EHM system, today, is also at work in the United States and other economically developed countries. It is everywhere. And there are many more variations on each of these tools. There are hundreds of thousands more EHMs spread around the world. They have created a truly global empire. They are working in the open as well as in the shadows. This system has become so widely and deeply entrenched that it is the normal way of doing business and therefore is not alarming to most people.”

People have been so badly plundered by jobs offshoring and indebtedness that consumer demand cannot support profits. Consequently, capitalism has turned to exploiting the West itself. Faced with rising resistance, the EHM system has armed itself with “the PATRIOT Act, the militarization of police forces, a vast array of new surveillance technologies, the infiltration and sabotage of the Occupy movement, and the dramatic expansion of privatized prisons.” The democratic process has been subverted by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling and other court decisions, by corporate-funded political action committees, and by organizations such as the American Legislative Exchange Council financed by the One Percent. Cadres of lawyers, lobbyists, and strategists are hired to legalize corruption, and presstitutes work overtime to convince gullible Americans that elections are real and represent the workings of democracy.

In a February 19, 2016 article in OpEdNews, Matt Peppe reports that the American colony of Puerto Rico is being driven into the ground in order to satisfy foreign creditors. 

The airport has been privatized, and the main highways have been privatized in a 40-year lease owned by a consortium formed by a Goldman Sachs infrastructure investment fund. Puerto Ricans now pay private corporations for the use of infrastructure that tax dollars built. Recently Puerto Rico’s sales tax was raised 64% to 11.5%. A sales tax increase is equivalent to a rise in inflation and results in a decline in real incomes.

Today the only difference between capitalism and gangsterism is that capitalism has succeeded in legalizing its gangsterism and, thus, can strike a harder bargain than can the Mafia.

Perkins shows that the evil empire has the world in the grip of a “death economy.”

He concludes that “we need a revolution” in order “to bury the death economy and birth the life economy.” Don’t look to politicians, neoliberal economists, and presstitutes for any help.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1p2C8wB Tyler Durden

The war between Obama and the Republican Party over Scalia’s Supreme Court replacement just went nuclear.

One day after a 1992 video clip emerged of vice president Joe Biden emerged when the then-senator from Delaware said the Senate should not consider a Supreme Court nominee by president George H.W. Bush during an election year, this afternoon Senate Republicans went “all in” on a Supreme Court gamble, in which they vowed to deny holding confirmation hearings for any nominee from President Obama.

LETTER: ‘this Committee will not hold hearings on any Supreme Court nominee’ until 1/20/17 http://pic.twitter.com/rMKGkDOn58

— Mike DeBonis (@mikedebonis) February 23, 2016

The unprecedented decision, made before the president has named a nominee, marks a new chapter in Washington’s war over judicial nominations according to The Hill. In a battle of superlatives, CNN adds that the “historic move outraged Democrats and injected Supreme Court politics into the center of an already tense battle for the White House.”

“I don’t know how many times we need to keep saying this: The Judiciary Committee has unanimously recommended to me that there be no hearing. I’ve said repeatedly and I’m now confident that my conference agrees that this decision ought to be made by the next president, whoever is elected,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Tuesday.

He then added he would not likely meet with any nominee, a custom that high court nominees typically do before hearings. “I don’t know the purpose of such a visit I would not be inclined to take it myself.”

The decision to not hold hearings is a historic move from the Senate, which has regularly held confirmation hearings for nominees since hearings became routine practice in 1955, the Senate historian’s office said Tuesday.

McConnell was not alone: Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn said he also would not meet with a nominee. “I don’t see the point in going through the motions, if we know what the outcome is going to be. I don’t see the point in going through the motions and creating a misleading impression.”

Cornyn, a Texas Republican, told reporters at an afternoon press conference that the Republicans on the Judiciary committee submitted a letter to the Republican leaders unanimously opposing any hearing for a nominee to replace late Justice Antonin Scalia.

South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham said that’s the “consensus” view among Republicans on the committee and Cornyn said the same.

“We believe the American people need to decide who is going to make this appointment rather than a lame-duck president,” Cornyn said Tuesday as he left a meeting of top Republicans discussing how to handle the White House’s promised nominee.

Graham went so far as telling CNN he would not even meet with any nominee, should he or she make courtesy calls on the Hill. As did Sen. Tim Scott, a South Carolina Republican. 

The stakes for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and his conference are high. A Fox News poll released earlier this month found that registered voters want Obama and Senate leaders to “take action to fill the vacancy now” by a margin of 62% to 34%. A Pew Research Center poll released Monday found a majority of Americans (56%) say the Senate should hold hearings and vote on Obama’s choice to fill the vacancy, with 38% saying they should not hold hearings until the next president takes office.

“His vulnerable people are not going to get off the hook,” said Sen. Charles Schumer (N.Y.), Senate Democrats’ chief political strategist. “The public is demanding [action], huge groups are demanding it. We’ve seen data that the millennials care more about the Supreme Court than anybody else.”

Nonetheless, in a sharply worded statement on the Senate floor earlier Tuesday, McConnell bluntly warned the White House that the GOP-controlled Senate would not act on anyone he chooses to sit on the high court.

As The Hill adds, the fierce debate could also cause a breakdown in bipartisan relations, threatening legislation on the agenda for the rest of this year.

The biggest consequence may be the precedent it sets for future nominees to the nation’s highest court, however, in an era when parties have begun angling for the presidency earlier and earlier. If Republicans win the White House, Democrats are more likely to retaliate with filibusters to block judicial nominees.

In the short term, their position will give Democrats a political cudgel to pummel vulnerable incumbents facing reelection.

But McConnell sees it as a smart political bet. By “ripping the Band-Aid off,” in the words of one senior GOP aide, he is hoping to limit the political pain to a span of weeks instead of letting Democrats milk the issue for months.

 

Republicans know they’re not going to confirm Obama’s nominee to replace legendary conservative jurist Antonin Scalia. A liberal successor would dramatically change the ideological balance of the court.

Some see the move as strategically prudent: holding hearings this spring would allow the Obama administration and Democrats to shift the focus to the personal story of the nominee and away from the principle that a president should not make the pick in an election year. Democrats could stretch out stories about GOP obstruction for the rest of the year. Without Senate action, it will be tougher to fuel media interest.

“It’s a smart gamble. They elect him leader to make these kinds of decisions,” said the senior aide. “We were in the middle of a recess, everyone was scattered, and he acted rightly and decisively. Everyone has rallied around him.”

Others are not convinced and have warned that it would be a mistake to shut down Obama’s pick without a fair review. “It’s common sense to have hearings and then an up-or-down vote and say why you’re opposing a person,” said Rep. Pete King (R-N.Y.) in an interview. “To just say no [and have] no hearings, no vote, I think that puts us on the defensive. It looks like we’re afraid of something.”

One of the chamber’s most vulnerable Republicans, Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), wrote in an op-ed Monday that he and his colleagues have “a duty” to review and vote on the nominee.

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), a member of the Judiciary Committee, initially warned that his party could “fall into the trap of obstructionists” if it rejects the nominee “sight unseen.”

On thing is certain, the Democrats are outraged and unleashed sharp criticism contending that the GOP-led Senate was failing to do its job and would be risking its tenuous hold on the majority in the fall elections.

Obama jabbed at Senate Republicans, tweeting Tuesday evening for Americans to tell the majority party in the Senate to “#DoYourJob.”

“Refusing to even consider the President’s Supreme Court nominee is unprecedented,” he tweeted.

Refusing to even consider the President’s Supreme Court nominee is unprecedented. Tell the Senate: #DoYourJob. https://t.co/kSrKv5e3Ae

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) February 23, 2016

But best of all, even Trump is somehow now involved.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid said McConnell was taking his marching orders from Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump, who had called on the Senate to delay consideration of any nominee.

 

“That’s exactly what the Republican leader is doing: Delay, delay, delay,” Reid said. He angrily added that “333 days isn’t enough to do the work that we do ordinarily do in 67 days.”

We eagerly look forward to Trump’s retort. And while we do, one thing is certain: if the Fed had harbored any hopes that some consensus over a fiscal policy stimulus would emerge in Congress and pick up the baton from money printing, it will be sorely disappointed.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1PXTyTH Tyler Durden

Where possible, we try not to beat dead horses but when it comes to the death of the so called “Alberta dream,” it’s rather difficult to ignore the pace at which conditions continue to deteriorate in Canada’s beleaguered oil patch.

We’ve covered Alberta’s demise extensively over the past twelve months, documenting everything from soaring food bank usage to the alarming spike in property crime in Calgary where vacant office space sits collecting dust and condos go unsold even as housing prices soar in British Columbia and Ontario.

Last year, Alberta logged the most job losses the province has seen in 34 years, as the unemployment rate spiked to 7.1% from just 4.8% at the end of 2014. 2015 turned out to be worse for provincial job losses than 2009.

Now, in the latest sign that the seemingly inexorable decline in crude will continue to weigh on Alberta’s flagging economy, we learn that O&G companies have simply stopped paying rent for surface access to private property. 

“For the past five years, regular as clockwork, an oil and gas company’s cheque for $4,097 has arrived in Allison Shelstad’s mailbox sometime in January, rent paid for surface access to a natural gas well on the farmland southeast of Calgary her family has owned for more than 50 years,” The Calgary Herald reports. 

This year, the check didn’t show up. And neither did checks for 765 landowners who have now appealed to the Alberta Surface Rights Board for relief. That’s the highest number of appellees in at least 12 years. 

In total, the board is demanding that O&G producers fork over $1.7 million in lease payments, more than double 2014’s court-ordered back payments. As The Herald goes on to note, this dwarfs the figures from 2008-09: “During the downturn of 2008-09, only 268 and 241 landowners, owed $490,000 and $730,000, respectively, took their complaints to the board.”

“I think (the oil industry) thought the big revenues were going to go on forever. They gave a lot of money away to the shareholders, and they kept quite a bit for themselves, probably the biggest part,” says 69-year-old Perry Nelson, who has 30 well leases and who has made his first ever application to the Surface Rights Board. “I don’t know how they went from windfall profits to where they are today.” 

Well, they went from windfall profits to “where they are today” because crude prices collapsed by 60%. We’re not defending the industry but it’s not exactly like this is a mystery. North American production threatened Riyadh’s market share and the Saudis simply bankrupted the space. That’s all there is to it. 

The problem for the Perry Nelsons and Allison Shelstads of the world is that while the government can demand that the companies pay, it cannot extract money that isn’t there to extract. In other words, if companies simply don’t have the money, provincial authorities are forced to foot the bill. And yes, that means landowners are effectively paying themselves for the rights to use the land they themselves own.

Welcome to “lower for longer” Alberta. Blame Ali Al-Naimi.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1LFeBqi Tyler Durden

Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

Here’s a bothersome trend that seems quite fitting for the smoke and mirrors driven, celebrity obsessed, hologram society that America has become. A company known as Crowds on Demand is actually in the business of providing fake protesters for causes, fake entourages for wanna be celebrities and seemingly even fake supporters for unpopular corporate activities.

 

This just furthers my feeling that action is far more important than traditional protests in the 21st Century. They key to getting out of the mess we are in is to actively create a parallel economy and even monetary system adjacent to the current terminal one. That way, when this one blows up, we already have the infrastructure in place to move to another paradigm. One characterized by peaceful, voluntary human interaction and dominated by decentralization in virtually all aspects of human existence.

 

– From the 2013 post: Protesters for Hire: For a Few Thousand Dollars We’ll Buy You a Small Entourage

I first highlighted the company Crowds on Demand over two years ago in the above post. Turns out it’s much worse than I could have imagined.

 

From NBC News:

In Camarillo, citizens aren’t shy about expressing their opinions. But on a chilly Wednesday night in December, city officials say one man stood out.

 

For nearly three minutes, Prince Jordan Tyson is on camera telling city leaders what he later admits, is a lie.

 

In fact, Tyson, who is not from Camarillo, is a self described struggling actor from Beverly Hills and he now believes he was involved in a secretive new industry where actors are hired to try and sway public officials.

In this case, a construction project in Camarillo he says he was hired to criticize.

 

“It was scripted, they told me what to say,” Tyson told NBC4.

 

Some of those scripted lines, he says were provided by recent UCLA graduate Adam Swart, CEO of a company called Crowds on Demand, which will stage rallies and demonstrations for any almost candidate or cause.

 

Swart says he has employed actors to sway city officials in meetings across the country.

 

“I have worked with dozens of campaigns for state officials, and 2016 presidential candidates,” Swart told NBC4, adding that he won’t name any names.

 

“I can’t go in to detail… if I did, nobody would hire us.”

 

The California Political Practices Commission tells NBC4 political campaigns are required by law to report expenditures.

 

But, public records indicate only one committee in the entire state has ever reported paying “Crowds On Demand”, that committee is Six California’s, the campaign to split California in to 6 different states.

 

State officials say some campaigns and politicians who hire “Crowds On Demand”… and fail to report campaign expenditures, could be breaking the law.

 

Hiring actors is not illegal. Although, entertainment law attorney and USC professor Lincoln Bandlow says telling those actors what to do and say could lead to lawsuits, if someone feels harmed.

 

“Paying someone to go out there and make false representations to a city council is going to give rise to possible fraud claims, possible intentional interference with business relations claims, maybe defamatory statement claims.”

 

Swart would not confirm to NBC4 that he hired Tyson or gave him lines, but says he has hired actors on multiple occasions to try and sway city officials across the country.

 

Swart tells NBC4 he has 20,000 actors across the country and most are required to sign a non-disclosure agreement.

If there’s a hell, this guy’s going. Personally, I’d settle for prison.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1PXMyq0 Tyler Durden